Lecture 4: Methods & Developemtnal Contexts
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Methods
Experiments
Natural experiments
Naturalistic observation
Longitudinal versus cross-sectional versus cross-sequential (accelerated
longitudinal design)
Cohort effects
Attrition
Challenges of doing research with children of different ages
Challenges of doing research with children from different cultures
model
Lec. 4 outline continued
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Contexts of Development
Marasmus, hospitalism, failure to thrive, institutionalization
Urie Bronfrenbrenner’s model
Biological environment
Species wide characteristics
Individual characteristics
Immediate environment
Family, including bidirectional effects
Neighborhood
Peer group
Day care/schooling
Social and economic environment
Economic (including maternal employment)
Nontraditional parenting
Single, Gay/lesbian, foster, divorce
SES and poverty, homlessness
Cultural environment
Interactions among the levels in Bronfrenbrenner’s
Experiments
• Advantage – clearly establishes causality
• Problem– many of the things we would like to
investigate it would be unethical to
intentionally do to a child to investigate its
effect (e.g., child abuse, starvation)
• Natural experiments provide a partial solution
to this limitation
Naturalistic Observation
• Advantage – ecological validity
• Disadvantages:
– Many uncontrolled variables
– Usually not a random sample
Design of Developmental Studies
• Longitudinal – to understand changes with age
follow the same children as they grow older
• Crossectional – study groups of children of
different ages and “presume” the differences
between the age groups are a consequence of
development.
• Cross-sequential (accelerated longitudinal) –
combines the two designs above. Is particularly
good for revealing cohort effects and helps in
understanding non-random attrition.
Challenges of working with different
age groups
• Does the task mean the same thing at
different ages.
• Ceiling and floor effects.
Challenges of doing research with
children from different cultures
• Does the task mean the same thing to
individuals from different cultures.
• Do they respond to research situations
similarly.
• What norms do you use?
Contexts of Development
Feral Children (the wild boy of Aveyron)
• Rene Spits (1945)—orphanages
• Romanian orphanages more recently
• Concepts
– Marasmus, hospitalism, failure to thrive,
institutionalization
Biological Environment/Individual Child
• Species-wide characteristics
– Strongest evidence for the importance of heredity
• Physical characteristics
• Propensity to learn
• Propensity to be social and emotional
– Individual differences
• Traits/temperaments
– Interaction between the genetics and environment
• canalization
Child’s Immediate Environment
• Family
– Bidirectional effects
– Fathers (direct & indirect effects0
– Siblings
– Day care (no demonstrable negative effect)
– Peer group (symmetrical relations)
– Neighborhood – collective socialization
– School - John Dewy (good or bad)
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Social and Economic Context
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Social Capital Theory
Maternal employment
Single Parents
Divorce
Non-traditional families
SES – poverty
Homelessness--unemployment
Poverty in US
• Graph in text looks encouraging with rates
going down between 1960 and 2000,
although uneven for children with an increase
between 1970 and 1990.
• Unfortunately, poverty rate for children
increased between 2000 to 2010 from 16.2%
to 22.0%
• Cycle of Poverty
Cultures
• Cooperation
• Education